Lord Moyu was forced to open

"Dad! This can't work! If this continues, my Liu family will no longer have any power at all in Leping County!
Look at those court officials, they don't take us seriously at all.

Isn’t it just to let some idiots pay decades more taxes? They actually gave our fields to those mud-legged people because of this!

This really disrespects my Liu family!
There are also those young people who look weird. They actually want to put them in the village below to become village chiefs. How can this be done? The reason why my Liu family is so powerful in Leping County is because the village chiefs in most places are from my Liu family!
Without these foundations, how can my Liu family influence those villages? "

Xiangnan County, Leping County.

Leping County is a well-known poor county. Not only does it have a small population and land, it also has few wealthy families in the county.

The only family in Leping County that can be called a wealthy family is the Liu family.

The Liu family is a big family in Leping. It has been in Leping for generations. After more than ten generations of gradual penetration, now not only the county magistrate, but the officials appointed by the court are not from the Liu family, most of the people in the government office are not from the Liu family. If you are not a member of the Liu family, you are also someone who listens to the Liu family.

As for the Liu family, the people who really let them control Leping County are the village chiefs of the dozens of villages below.

Leping County has 20 villages under its jurisdiction, and the village chiefs of at least of them are members of the Liu family or people who have taken refuge with the Liu family.

And it is precisely because of this that the Liu family can be said to dominate the sky in Leping County. As long as the head of the Liu family says a word, the entire Leping County will tremble.

Liu Jianqiao, the eldest young master of the Liu family, even said:
"In Leping, whatever the Liu family likes must belong to the Liu family!"

This shows the power of the Liu family in Leping.

However, since the arrival of the Qingzhang working group, the Liu family has begun to hold back their anger.

First of all, in terms of fields, as the only wealthy family in Leping County.

Of the 13,000 acres of farmland in the entire county, at least 8,000 acres belong to the Liu family.

However, the Liu family always pays very little or none at all when paying taxes every year.

But what about Leping County’s annual taxes?

The magistrate of Leping County had no choice but to watch helplessly as his subordinates collaborated and spread the taxes equally to the common people.

The people in Leping County often have to pay three to five acres of tax per acre of land. Year after year, one day they will be unable to bear it.

Then there is the matter of selling the land.

Then Tian entered the Liu family.

This is also the main reason why the Liu family’s fields are increasing year by year.

The more fields the Liu family has, the less fields the common people have, but the more taxes the common people have to bear.

The more taxes the people bear, the less they can survive, so they have no choice but to sell their fields, and then the Liu family pockets the fields, thus forming a vicious cycle.

The Liu family can also sit back and wait for the fields to automatically come to their family in this way.

This also made the Liu family become richer and richer, the people became poorer and poorer, and the Yamen became poorer along with them.

The people paid more and more taxes, but the yamen were still poor. The amount of taxes paid every year became less and less every year. In the end, all the money went to the Liu family.

This situation quickly attracted the attention of the Qingzhang Group.

The members of the Qingzhang group immediately identified Leping as the place that needed to be cleared first, and led the people straight to Leping.

As soon as they arrived in Leping County, they first began to conduct an inventory of the fields, and found that the land owned by Leping County was far more than the 1 acres on the map.

These 13000 acres of land are still left over from the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Hundreds of years have passed, and the newly reclaimed land has totaled nearly 20,000 acres.

However, there is not a single acre of newly reclaimed land in the imperial court’s account books.
With just one glance, the members of the working group understood what was going on. This was not the first time they had seen this kind of thing. It was simply that the land had been hidden away by the local wealthy families.

The working group's approach is also very simple. Since these lands are not registered in the atlas, they are all unclaimed land and will be nationalized.

All of a sudden, it was like touching a hornet's nest, and all kinds of difficulties and obstacles followed one after another.

It actually caused a lot of trouble for the working group.

However, with rich experience, the working group dealt with them one by one.

But the team ran into difficulties when it came to finding those registered lands. Everything in the album appears normal.

But precisely because of this, it seems even more abnormal.

The official in charge of the work of clearing the abbot of Leping County was named Zhong Changwen.

They were members of the civil service department who joined the civil service department after the old batch of civil service officials were purged during the Qing Dynasty of Gyeonggi Province last year.

He also participated in the Qingzhang work in Gyeonggi Province.

After hearing the situation reported by his subordinates, he immediately smiled and said: "This is just a cover-up. If the government's account books are abnormal, wouldn't they be exposed?

Just send a few people to the countryside and ask them about their annual tax payments.

By the way, don't go there in official uniform and pretend to be a refugee from other places, otherwise you won't see the real thing. "

All the men looked at each other, but then they all nodded and got ready.

The next day.

Huangshan Village.

It was early in the morning, the cock crowed three times, and in every household there were people walking towards the fields with hoes on their shoulders and heavy faces.

At dawn, it's time to work, otherwise the whole family will have to drink the northwest wind. The tax is already heavy, and if they are more lazy, the family will really not be able to survive.

However, when everyone reached the entrance of the village, they suddenly discovered that under the big tree in front of the village, a few people in tattered clothes had appeared, huddled and shivering under the tree.

Seeing these people, the villagers stopped curiously.

At this time, someone couldn't help but stepped forward. Seeing that these four people were all young people, they looked puzzled and said:

"What are you young people doing here?"

One of the thinnest young men raised his face covered in dust and said with a bitter look:

"Old man. We are escaping from the neighboring county. We encountered a red dragon at home and we have been escaping all the way. Can you give us some water?"

These gray-headed people are none other than those sent by the working group to inquire about the news. These people are specially selected to be thin and put on makeup to look like this. Although there is no guarantee that they will be able to escape like the real ones. The people are exactly the same, but there are still some similarities.

The people in Huangshan Village have probably never left the county in their lives, so they don't know whether what they say is true, so they don't have any doubts when they say it.

The old man who came to ask the question sighed, and then called to a young man in the crowd behind him: "Sanwazi, go get some water for them. They all escaped from trouble."

A young man carrying a hoe behind him responded and hurried back to fetch water. The old man then turned to several people and said helplessly:
"Young students, I'm sorry that we can only give you some water here, and there is no food. The village is poor, and many of us can't even dig wild vegetables to eat. We really don't have any extra food for you."

The old man's thin body and sunken face all proved what he said.

Not long after, Sanwazi brought water and several broken pottery bowls with missing edges. These were already the best bowls in Sanwazi's house.

Several people took the water and gulped it down quickly, looking as if they hadn't drank water for a long time.

After drinking the water in the bowl, the young man who had just begged for water wiped his mouth, then looked at the people watching and wondered:

"The old man sees that you are going to work in the fields. If that's the case, you should have fields. Why don't you have enough to eat if you have fields?

Didn't you suffer any disaster here? "

The old man sighed after hearing this and waved his hands: "So what if you have fields? The taxes are getting more and more every year. Even if you have fields, it's not enough to pay the taxes..."

After speaking, the old man showed a helpless expression on his face, and the other villagers around him also lowered their heads.

"Ah? Old man, what did you say?

Isn't the Holy Emperor in court now?

The annual field tax has now been reduced to eighty pounds per mu of land per season. Why can't we still pay the grain? "

Now it was the old man's turn to suddenly open his eyes!

...(End of chapter)